This is me playing around with my Belca Beltica this past winter. The Beltica is a little folding camera manufactured in East Germany in the 40s & 50s; you might like to read about it here, especially if you’re into things like Zeiss lenses and Cludor shutters.

I gotta admit, this little camera has knocked me for a loop and I’ve had a pretty steep learning curve, which just gets steeper with each roll I pop in it. (In fact, I’ve owned the thing for over a year already, and these are the only shots so far that I’m not embarrassed to show.) The only manual I’ve been able to find is actually not for my model, but for an earlier version (the Baldina), so some of the little gewgaws and what-nots are ever so slightly not exactly the same. Argh.

I do like how the scene in the photo above looks a little like something from a model train set.

(Also: A little lesson in what cloud cover can do, eh? The same roll of film, a few hours apart.)